Busty Barbarian Bimbos via Kickstarter

„A lighthearted fantasy roleplaying game wherein the players take on the role of the pin-up girls from fantasy artwork.

For decades, games have been marketed with scantily-clad, shapely young women prominently displayed. All too frequently these games aren’t about those cheesecake pin-ups at all. The girl is a damsel in distress or villain, and the majority of play revolves around sweaty muscle-men running around being manly. Not so with Busty Barbarian Bimbos. Here the players take on the roles of the titular characters in a world that is dominated not by bearded wizards and savage swordsmen, but by the values of aesthetic beauty, fashion, and social standing.

Core design concerns, taken into account whenever possible, include

Pretty girls get preferential treatment. They are treated better by other characters. They are treated better by their clothes. They are treated better by the rules.

Disdain for slavish book-keeping. Book-keeping leads to math, math leads to tedium, and tedium isn’t what games are for.

Disdain for verisimilitude. While the assumed setting is essentially a post-apocalyptic swords & sorcery environment, getting too serious about questions like “what kind of economic and industrial infrastructure is present to allow for the supply of lip-liner and daiquiris?” is a buzz-kill.

Dismissal of manliness. Men don’t matter. The heroines aren’t encouraged to solve problems by emulating manly characters from other games. We aren’t taking Conan the Cimmerian and photoshopping a bikini onto him. Not to knock Red Sonja, but the model of empowering girls by having them act like boys is not the goal here.

Busty Barbarian Bimbos has been through a lot of changes through playtesting and high-concept debates regarding both tone and mechanical systems. The result is a sleek, extremely math-light system that facilitates extemporaneous, spontaneous storytelling.“